I made some things.

Yesterday Nathanael and I went out to the garden to finish up some things we hadn't had the chance to complete during our busy Saturday. We made a few new rows, but it has been to dry to break the soil appropriately for planting (i.e. the soil is concrete), so I was writing some seed names on stakes, which required me to reference the seeds. About then, Nathanael and I both realized our seeds were just too disorganized. As you can see below, they were neither functional or manageable, but more or less in two large piles (though not spilling during transportation, which is a plus).

Thus, I decided that today's project would be solving this problem. I got a box (one of many from our move and the packages we receive from family), tore all of the labels off of it and went to work. As you may begin to notice, I never actually use scrapbooking paper for creating scrapbooks, but I love to use it to decorate. After adorning the box I used some cardstock (leftover from creating our wedding invitations believe it or not--though we only used the yellow for that) to create tabs, and voila! A recipe-box-like seed organizer.

 

Nathanael and I are both pretty excited about how much easier this will make our planting times. 

Also this week, I decided to make use of some of the blue jeans I have been collecting and make a thick, durable potholder. Nathanael's old black Singer sewing machine is pretty powerful to make it through all of these layers! Some parts of it required some seam-ripping and redesigning as I went, but I am pretty happy with the finished product and it is now listed in my shop. (See link at top left for shop listing and larger versions of the potholder pictures.)

 And finally, remember the rice bags I made at Christmas time? One of my friends really liked them and commisioned me to make one so she could use it instead of a heating pad for her TMJ. And since the rice bag has no plastic parts, it's a great way to reduce the footprint of an ailment. Here's what I created for her...

(The pictures taken on my jungle table cloth are of the rice bag before I filled it with some local popcorn rice.) I put some other little edible treats in the box too, because if you're going to pay for shipping, why not make it delicious, right?

Have you guys been creating or renovating anything this week?

Aubergine

A little while ago Mrs. Long asked me what I would do with an eggplant.
Eggplants are so interesting. We classify them as a vegetable in the grocery store because they are not sweet, but of course botanically speaking they are a fruit. And whichever way you choose to look at them they are completely odd. Eggplants have always reminded me of a dinosaur. They have leathery skin and their sepals (the leaves near the stem) are thick and tough. Inside they are foamy and probably mostly air. So, maybe the dinosaur thing doesn’t go very far. Still, they seem to have little in common with other items we purchase in the produce section.
Growing up my sisters and I were in a 4-H club with our town, and every year the county would have an event called, “International Foods Day”. At this event all of the clubs in the county would represent a country, cook lots of their foods, create a presentation, and share all that they had learned and cooked with the other clubs. The preparatory time with the other club members was always really fun. On different years our club represented Italy, Scotland, Finland, Mexico, Bosnia, and some others. From most of the countries I can still recall the foods we made, and the dances and games we performed onstage. However, the only thing I remember from the year we chose Bosnia is that a few of us were in charge of a food that involved taking strips of roasting eggplant, picking them up, and squeezing them through our hands to separate the eggplant from its skin and seeds. Raw eggplant seems like such a harmless and bland food, but the roasted eggplant was so acidic that it made our hands itch and burn. No one could have known how hard we had worked for that mushy looking dish.
The most recent eggplant recipe I have attempted did not cause any pain, turned out quite delicious, and was actually pretty quick. I will not post it on here because I found it in a library book I highly recommend called “Cooking with my Indian Mother-in law”, which has provided us with Indian food recipes for weeks now. But, if you are really interested in making Aubergine and potato curry, you can either attempt one on your own (which would probably turn out fine), look it up in the library, or email me. I don’t mind sharing other people’s recipes on a person to person basis, I just don’t want to broadcast them to the world when that’s what they wrote their book to do. I will be sending the recipe to Mrs. Long.

*One tip from this recipe that I found really handy was to soak the eggplant pieces in water after you cut them to reduce the bitterness a bit, and the potatoes to keep them from oxidizing. Press the eggplant into the water with a plate because they will float...they are mostly air after all.